Climate change report frames bleak future picture

Published 2:17 pm, Wednesday, April 2, 2014

A new report from an international study group on climate change could hardly be gloomier. The adverse effects of greenhouse gases in global environments, at least in part probably caused by human activities, extend from coastal flooding to farmland drought.

Food insecurity. Social displacement. Biodiversity losses. Systemic collapse. The ways catastrophe can strike are many as weather patterns become more volatile and as ecosystems evolve in the grip of advancing warmth.

"Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change," Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the intergovernmental panel, said at a news conference in Yokohama, Japan.

The reports lead up to discussions later this year of a global treaty on greenhouse gases. That will be no easy task given stark differences between developed societies, such as the United States, which have wrestled with mitigation for years, and those (China, India) that have yet to contain industrial, pollution-spewing booms.

Caught in the middle are poor, underdeveloped nations, where, the report indicates, hunger and weather-ravaged social systems are bound to increase through little fault of their own. They'd like wealthier nations — the major source of greenhouse gases — to aid their fight against drought and the consequences of inadequate infrastructures.

There are encouraging signs as nations around the globe investigate disaster risks, resilient alternative crops, and needed policies and technologies in the face of rising sea levels.

But that optimism pales against the report's observations like this:

"Throughout the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger."

There are, of course, skeptics, but the science of climate change clearly has accelerated since this project began nearly a quarter of a century ago. The real message of this new report has to do with how it frames the issues in terms of risk management. That's an issue all nations can embrace. Responding with urgency may cost far less than waiting until disaster strikes.